Life can feel meaningless at times. And in a way, it kinda is - everyone has to choose their own goals, their own way of living life. But then, what’s the point of getting up at all? Why not just stay in bed… forever? Or just… end it all? (Note: This is purely hypothetical - it is posed mainly as a thought experiment. Also cause I took philosophy at some point.)

Is suicide an option?

Question

Are there any circumstances in which suicide makes sense? If so, what? If not, what implications does this have on our approach to life?

Answer: No!

Suicide is not an option under normal circumstances. If either no one would be severely affected by your choice, or the suffering in life greatly outweighs the rewards, then suicide becomes an option. However, there are always other paths to take that can fix the above conditions.

Reasoning

R (Response): No. People (friends, family / extended family, etc.) care about you. If anything happened to you, they would certainly feel terrible, and even responsible for your actions. Things would be especially bad for your parents and friends.
C (Counter): What if the world isn’t real, whatever that means? Nothing matters anyway, right? Even if your death would have impact on other people, what do you care if everyone’s fake anyways, including parents and friends?
R: What does it mean for the world to not be real? Even if it were made by God, or if it’s simulated, or if we just… came into being somehow, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re here now. We’re in this world with other people. There’s no way to know anything concrete about what happens after we die, and there’s no reason to believe anything special happens. We only have this one life, so we should take advantage of it!
C: Assuming we only have one life, why not just end it? Is nothing better than something? Is this a selfish idea? Why live life out if it’s full of suffering anyways? Is life worth living?
R: Other people are as real as we are, and their feelings are as real as ours can be. So, the negative impact suicide would have on them is very real, meaning that it is selfish to try that. Life isn’t all suffering, there are plenty of rewarding experiences and relationships to discover. The questions “Is life worth living?” and “Is nothing better than something?” might be better addressed in a separate question.
C: It sounds like suicide might be an option if either no one in this life cares about you, or if life is truly full of suffering, and that suffering outweighs the positive experiences you get from it. Is this true?
R: The questions get weird here. If no one cares about you, you can always make friends, and then the previous statement no longer applies. If suffering outweighs the positives, you can change your life situation by surrounding yourself with positive experiences and getting rid of as much suffering as possible. So technically, it’s possible to make the non-suicide conditions apply still, but only if we choose to.

C: Let’s dive into these 2 circumstances we’ve identified. Since we used “or” to combine them, we’ll consider each circumstance separately.
#1 = If no one would be severely affected by your death, then suicide becomes an option.
I understand that we’re treating feelings and people as real now, so that’s not a viable argument. And yes, we won’t do anything dumb while people care about us. However, what does “severely” mean? Do friends count? Distant relatives? Classmates? Strangers? And if we tried hard enough, couldn’t we make friends that care about us, invalidating this circumstance?
R: For the final question, there are always other options apart from suicide. However, all I’m saying is that suicide then becomes a viable option, even if it’s less appealing than other options. I think that concludes that suicide cannot be completely removed as an option logically; I guess that’s why there are people who do it. :/
As for the first part, the first condition is that the other person would need to find out somehow. Either they’re related enough to get the news relayed, or they’re physically / situationally close enough to hear about it. How affected they would be depends on a combination of how well they knew me and how self-confident they are (they might feel guilty that they didn’t do “more”, whatever that means, or they might just feel that it’s someone else’s fault anyways). This isn’t a very thorough analysis since it doesn’t matter too much, but I think with these things laid out, severely affected people would be friends and close relatives, but not distant relatives, acquaintances, semi friends, classmates, or strangers.
C: Ok, I’m satisfied with #1.
#2 = The suffering in life greatly outweighs the rewards.
Again, what degree does “greatly” imply? This feels like a selfish reason, especially if #1 doesn’t apply. Of course, if you’re truly suffering and there’s no hope left, then maybe this would apply…??? There are always other options though… right?
R: I think we need to do a case study for this one. I’m trying to think about how homeless people are able to survive despite the immense suffering that they face (at least from my perspective). I’ll come back after learning more about this, since I think the homeless situation and their reasons for living (or not living) will help me rethink this circumstance.
Ok, so based on the way homeless articles are phrased, yes, they’re going through enormous hardship, and they are 10x more likely to die by suicide. However, they continue to make the best of their situation because they don’t see any other option. Or at least, the other option is to die on the streets, which just isn’t an option to them.
One thing to make clear here - the stigma surrounding “death” is completely manmade. There’s nothing inherently bad about “dying”, it’s just that our brains are instinctively against the idea. In a way, all of humanity is participating in the game of life willingly, choosing to frame death as “the thing to avoid”. And I guess there are valid reasons to do this - we don’t know what happens after death, so we should make the most of the one thing we do know; we are here, right now, and we have the ability to choose our own life path.
C: We haven’t answered #2 yet.
R: The thing is, no matter how much suffering there seems to be at a given point, we always have the option to work hard to improve our living situation. We can choose to move on from traumatic events (though it might take some time). We can earn money, buy an apartment, buy a house, buy more things. We can find all sorts of people to make friends with, possibly even search for a romantic partner. I guess it comes down to the age old question - “Is life worth living?” Perhaps that’s a better question than “Is life happy or sad?”. It captures the same idea…

We’ll Be Alive Next Year

Knowing that dying intentionally is not an option, we can extend the argument.

Porter Robinson - Look at the Sky (Official Lyric Video)

Here’s an excerpt of the chorus:

Look at the sky, I’m still here

I’ll be alive next year

I can make something good…

Something good.

The idea is simple. We’ll (probably) be alive next year, barring some accident, medical situation, or other unintentional setback.

Therefore, we should try our best to make our living situation as comfortable as possible. If we’re definitely going to live through the next year, it’s better to make our situation as “tolerable” as possible, instead of doing nothing and suffering through the whole thing. That means ensuring we have enough money to live decently, keeping some routines so that our body stays healthy, etc.

Getting out of bed in the morning

So, we know we’ll be alive next year, and we want to make our life as comfortable as possible during this year.

Necessities

Unfortunately, because of how humans work, if you stay in bed all day, you’ll die. Yeah.
Since suicide isn’t an option, that’s a pretty good reason to get up

Self Improvement

Now I know this is a really cliche term, but the general idea makes sense. You have the power to change your life. If there’s something you don’t like about your life, you have the ability to change it. Now that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy, but you have control over yourself… that’s a really powerful concept.

Of course, you can’t change your life while you’re in bed. So think of this as another reason to get up - by getting up, you can start improving your life.

Goals

Since we have power over our own life, we can set goals for ourselves. Goals give us something to strive towards - which is the definition of a reason to get up! So, try setting SMART goals for yourself. Even something as simple as “get out of bed in the next 10 seconds” can work wonders (you might’ve unintentionally done this for yourself many times!).

Desires

On some days, you have a burning desire to get out of bed, because there’s something that you really want to do. Whether that’s pursuing your interests, meeting friends, or something else, I’m sure you can remember times when this has happened. It’s hard to control this motivation though.

What if I really don’t want to get up?

That’s completely fine! Don’t worry about it - seriously, it’s part of being human. Everyone needs a break from time to time

Just embrace the comfy feeling of being in bed. After some time, things will feel different, and you may feel more motivated to get up. Once you’re up, it’ll be easier to find reasons to do things. It will take some time though - so don’t worry about trying to “push” yourself up. It’ll happen naturally.

If this happens consistently though, it might be good to get some professional help. See https://988lifeline.org/ for more info.

Last updated: 25 December 2022

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